


created for sinners

by TolkienGirl



Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e21 Salvation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Dean Winchester, Pastor Jim's death, Psychic Sam Winchester, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "I like to say salvation was created for sinners. Tell me what's on your mind."- Jim Murphy
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jim Murphy & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777720
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	created for sinners

In the passenger seat, Sam’s crying.

Oh, sure, he’s being a man about it, knuckles tight against his mouth, jaw pinched like a nutcracker. But Dean’s seen it all before, seen the ways Sam cries, the ways he _used to_ cry when he was younger and had nothing to hide. The way he cried after Jess died, when he was too broken to keep it in.

Something has hardened in Sam since then. Something has broken further. Dean doesn’t know where the pieces will fit when they fall.

Yet Dean knew everything there was to know about Sam, once. He changed the kid’s goddamn diapers. Made him mac-and-cheese a hundred ways to Sunday. Proofread his essays, not that that did Sam much good.

“I just—” Sam chokes, after a moment. “I just—I didn’t think we’d lose him like that. Without even…God, I haven’t seen him in years. Before Stanford.”

He’s talking about Pastor Jim, of course, even though Sam hasn’t seen most people they used to know since Stanford. Hunters keep strange friends, and are known by stranger men of God, but Pastor Jim was one of the good ones. He’d known Dad since Vietnam. He’d kept them for weeks, even months, at Blue Earth. There’d been clean sheets on the twin beds in his spare room. There’d been three square meals a day.

Pastor Jim was also the one who helped field Sam’s applications and acceptance letters. That led to a falling out between Pastor Jim and Dad, Dean recalls. Different in tone from the one with Bobby, but the same in spirit.

Dean was there for both of them. Sam wasn’t, and so Dean was pissed at Sam, at the time.

Now he’s—now he’s worried sick over Sam, scared as hell over him, and wishing that both Sam and Dad could _be_ themselves without killing themselves.

‘Course, that seems less likely with each passing second.

Salvation, indeed.

“He was a good man,” Dean says, because it’s true, and because something has to fill the silence between Sam’s sniffles. “And we’re going to avenge him.” He says _that_ like he feels good about it, which, in another life where he’s everything he pretends to be, maybe he does.

Sam rubs his forehead. There’s still the smear of a tear on his cheek. Dean sees that, and little else, sneaking a glance at him in profile.

“I thought he’d know what to do,” Sam says. “About the visions.”

Dean hadn’t considered that. Hell, Dean’s been so in the middle of this for months (for his whole life), that he hadn’t given Pastor Jim a passing thought. Last time Pastor Jim was on _his_ mind was lost in the lonely months and years preceding last November, when he’d spent a helluva lot of time thinking about other people. 

Now he’s picturing Jim same as Sam is: blood spilling out of him.

Winchesters to blame.

“We’re gonna figure it out, Sam,” he promises.

Even without beloved men of God.


End file.
